


Too Darn Hot

by executrix



Category: Firefly
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-11
Updated: 2012-01-11
Packaged: 2017-10-29 08:43:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/317932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four times Serenity crewmembers had sex in Creaganville, and one crew member who didn’t:  A chatty PWP</p>
            </blockquote>





	Too Darn Hot

**Guesthouse Room C, Centurion Farms, Creaganville**  
Wash LOVED Twenties, especially because his Special Skills were Twenty-unfriendly. He couldn’t be out doing Personal Projects, he had to be on the bridge ready to peel out if and when something went wrong. But the crew member who got to keep the twenty percent of the job was sometimes Zoe (…once, by posing for a statue…) which meant that Wash really got a Ten, over and above his share of the other eighty percent.

In this particular case, Wash would be the hero of the hour. Because Creaganville was the Rooslemchoke capital of the ‘Verse. The dainty and unpredictable vegetables ripened when they were goddamn good and ready. Once they were ripe, it was a planetwide race with time to get them harvested before they rotted. A fancy restaurant in Beaumonde (Sir Warwick Harrow’s favorite) commissioned Serenity to deliver 25% of this year’s crop. Much of the payment, however, was deferred, contingent on timely delivery and with spoilage deductions.  
Rooslemchokes ripened during the monsoon season.

Simon toyed with the idea of going out picking for a day, because River loved Rooslemchokes. He was privately of the opinion that no one who hadn’t done a surgical residency really knew what hard work was. He had just about enough sense not to say this out loud, although that didn’t buy him anything, because River told everybody.

 **Miss Raelene’s Sporting House and Tonsorial Parlour, Creaganville**  
Jayne thought that Carrie Lou was hard-working and very professional. It wasn’t her fault that it was hot as blazes at Miss Raelene’s, and, indeed, in the whole hemisphere in which it was located. It was so hot that Jayne dug deeper into his pocket and hired two of the other girls to stand around in their corsets and striped stockings and wave palm-leaf fans and watch.

Now, all passion spent at least for half an hour, he sat in Carrie Lou’s room in his boxers and a straw porkpie hat with a striped band, smoking a cigar, sipping Long Island Iced Tea, and playing Parcheesi with Carrie Lou, Constanza, and Victorious Poppy.

“You girls better be careful,” Jayne said. “’cause when it’s this hot, you can’t tell if you’re fucking a vampire or a regular person."

“I don’t get it,” Constanza said.

“They ain’t got blood, not theirs runnin’ around anyhow, so they’d hafta be room-temperature. So the rest of the year, you can tell once a fella puts his hand on your tit, if, it’s like ten degrees too cold. Let it go any further, you got that whole ‘cold, dead seed’ thing goin’ on even if he don’t bite you. But when it’s like this, it’s like a chafing dish, they warm up like they was shrimp wiggle.”

“I wouldn’t mind,” Victorious Poppy said. “Then I’d get to skulk around a nice cool crypt instead of roasting my ass in here.”

“Y’know,” Jayne said. “No real reason why a prosperous establishment like this one couldn’t have AC.”

“I’m a Christian so I don’t throw the first stone at them what does, but I don’t do none of them girl tricks,” Carrie Lou said.

“No, not that kind o’AC, I meant aircon,” Jayne said.

“It’s those damn contractors,” Victorious Poppy said. “Half the time they don’t even show up so Miss Raelene can get a quote. Or they take the deposit and you never see them again. Or they make a big mess and then they disappear…”

Jayne crunched the last sliver of ice in his drink, then slugged down the diluted last half-inch. “Get me another one o’these, wouldya, Carrie Lou? Got an idea. I know just the person to build you a climate control system. Real smart, works hard, reliable…in exchange for a small commission for me, of course, but I’ll take it in trade.”

  
 **Mineral Mud Pits, Ten Clicks Out of Creaganville**  
When the temperature gets high enough, one option is to fight fire with fire. At the Mineral Mud Pits Day Spa, for a small consideration, visitors can get themselves ensconced in tanks partially filled with hot mud that is rich in healthful salts. For some of them, this is a chance to get away from it all, in profound stillness, to soothe aching bones and emerge with glowing skin. Others enjoy massages, hairdressing, and manicures.

Zoe and Wash paid the fee, locked their clothes (and Zoe’s minimal weapon set) in a locker. The key, on a springy chain, was around Zoe’s wrist. They wore the establishment’s toweling dressing gowns and paper slippers. Zoe was already wrapping her hair in a terrycloth turban lined with plastic when the attendant handed Wash two pairs of disposable underpants.

“Hey, lady! This is my wife!” he said.

“Suit yourself,” she said. “I could care less if she is or she isn’t. Me, I don’t like getting mud where there isn’t supposed to be mud, ever, but…” Seeing the sense of this approach, Wash subsided.

He took Zoe’s hand as they walked across the patio to one of the large double tanks. An attendant opened the tank and paid no attention to them as they shed their robes and slippers, having seen it all before. The attendant asked if they wanted the music on, and Wash nodded while Zoe shook her head decisively, so Wash rescinded his nod.

The tank was the size of a very large bed, or, on the other hand, a very small room. When they climbed in, at first they sank through the mud to the bottom of the tank, then floated up a little. The mud was very warm, and had a salty smell with a hint of vague spice.

Zoe gave a sigh that almost made Wash jealous. As she relaxed, Wash could feel shockwaves spurting out from her fingertips in the hand he held. He stretched out his other hand, and felt the side of the tank within armspan. That pushed him toward Zoe, and his hip bumped hers and sent her toward the other side of the tank. They caromed a few times, simultaneously realizing that the tank wasn’t deep enough for either of them to get strictly on top of the other, or even to flip onto their sides.

“Just wait ‘till we get into the shower,” Zoe whispered, so they lay back, drifting sometimes in the same direction and sometimes bouncing, floating in the almost-dark (there was a small, thick-ribbed window in the tank’s lid). An occasional hand explored, but mostly they were starfish side by side.

 **Miss Raelene’s**  
Kaylee wiped her hands on her coveralls, put the last few wrenches back in her toolbox, and stamped three times on the floor, which was the signal for Miss Raelene to flip the switch on the main control unit in her office. Kaylee wasn’t too surprised when the floor vibrated with a tiny ripple, and the compressor in the basement gave a contented hum that was just audible upstairs as a purr if you knew what you were listening for.

The door opened, and a young man walked in. Kaylee sized up the situation.“Did you, ummm, already get paid?” she asked. They must have passed the hat to thank her for installing the AC, over and above her fee. She was a little disappointed—he was a pleasant-looking young man, with a promising pair of shoulders, but there was nothing glamorous about him.

“Yes’m, and a good tip and everything. Girls here are good tippers.” (This used to be Jill-Anne’s room, and as far as he knew she had left for maternity leave the week before, so he was surprised to hear anyone moving around and came in to check.) He didn’t think this girl was as pretty as Jill-Anne, or maybe she just didn’t look as sophisticated. But then, plenty of customers went for the girl-next-door look.

Kaylee grinned, then went over to the bed and looked inside the nightstand. Of course there were condoms in there, plus lots of other small portable stuff, some of which she didn’t even know what it was for. “I’m partial to the chocolate-mint variety,” she said, tucking a couple under the pillow. “I’m going to take a shower—why don’t you get comfy on the bed? I’ll be right out.”

She didn’t think the establishment would grudge her a shower. She’d seen a big water tank on the roof, and the solar heating set-up was simple but it looked just fine to her. So she washed, enjoying the panoply of half-a-dozen or so soaps and shampoos, and wrapped her hair in one thirsty towel and the rest of her in another. The towel didn’t go very far, so she knotted it around her waist.

“Name’s Kaylee,” she said. “Todd,” the young man said, stretching out a hand to shake. Kaylee liked the pleasantries of civilization but didn’t like wasting time, so instead she put the hand over her right breast, like a collective salute to the Alliance Banner. She let the towel fall to the floor, pulled the second towel off her hair, then sat down on top of Todd.

“Okay to kiss you?” she asked.

“Sure thing!” Todd said.

Kaylee didn’t think he had any professional tricks that were any different from an ordinary fellow you might meet at a Harvest Festival party or a revival meeting, but she didn’t think it was the worst tumble she ever had either, and anyway her Mama always brought home the extra jar of apple butter if she had a coupon for it so Kaylee wasn’t going to turn down a nice little extra on top of her pay.

Todd had been delivering pizzas nights and weekends since his sophomore year in high school. Now he was doing it full-time. He had a month to go before he took the shuttle over to Baemore City to enroll at the Aggie & Tech. He had seen as many porn cortecasts as the next red-blooded young fellow, but nothing like this had EVER happened to him before.

 **Guesthouse, Room A**  
Mal tossed from side to side in an unrefreshing nap. Then he felt the rucked-up sheet thrown over the lower half of his body rise, surely not under impulsion of a hard-on, which it was way too hot for that to happen.

He levered his sore eyes open, like cranking a jalousie, and was astonished to see Simon, sitting crosswise on the bed, stark naked and eating an ice cream cone. He had his back against the wall, his legs tented across Mal’s like a croquet hoop.

Mal reacted instantly to this unusual, nay, startling sight. “You got ICE CREAM,” he accused, as Simon bent forward and drizzled some more of the melting ice cream over Mal’s balls.

“Relax,” Simon said. “I bought half a gallon. It’s in the chiller for after dinner.”

“What kind?” Mal asked, while Simon bent forward to lap at the ice cream that was already there.

“Neapolitan,” Simon said, refraining from Gift Horse references. “You know, with the different colored stripes. That way, everyone can pick their favorite.”

“Not my favorite,” Mal said. “Which is litchi ripple, **as you know**.”

“We all have to make sacrifices,” Simon said. “Mine is pistachio, but I thought it would be more erotic if I were drizzing your testicles with something that gives an artistic impression of semen…”

“There better not be anything green down there,” Mal said. “I’m just sayin’ Half a gallon of ice cream? You win the lottery?”

“Full calendar today,” Simon said. “Knife slash, two bullet wounds—the nurse had his work cut out for him just keeping them from shooting each other again, more conclusively this time—guy who probably shouldn’t be a second-story man if he was going to fall out of the second story. Also, somebody wanted his fingerprints filed off, so I could give him the spiel about why that wasn’t such a good idea. And sell him that program River came up with for reporting his fingerprints as undetectable.”

Whenever he got a chance, Simon worked at a BadgerCare clinic. They were scattered all over the Rim, because in the criminal milieu, it was entirely predictable that a plethora of medical needs would arise that couldn’t be taken to a hospital. Major criminal organizations often maintained a staff, but the smaller organizations, the freelancers, or those adversely affected by economic conditions did not. A few Core planets even had permanent BadgerCare clinics, but since Serenity so seldom went there, Simon frequented the, as it were, pop-up shops. Sometimes Badger’s organization actually rented an office. Sometimes it targeted an existing office, creating and then curing the staff’s amnesia and dementia with poultices of fifty-credit notes. At the clinic, like a medieval cathedral, the law of Sanctuary usually applied. Usually.

Mal didn’t like Simon working there, saying it was too dangerous. Simon didn’t really rely on the decency and gratitude of his patients, but he was generally masked, with goggles over his eyes, and a cap over his hair, and he never left fingerprints on anything (even the gloves went right into the furnace). When they weren’t busy, Zoe or Jayne often accompanied him as a back-up for the usual clinic security personnel.

Simon swallowed most of the melted ice cream, like the shot in a boilermaker, then turned the cone—it was the kind with a flat bottom-- upside down over Mal’s dick. Simon bent to crunch at the frail cookie shell. Mal propped himself up on his elbows to observe. He wasn’t really nervous, but was, still and all, grateful when Simon’s teeth stopped with the on-the-dime precision of Wash landing behind a bar brawl.

“Degas’ worst nightmare,” Simon murmured, looking at the furious head emerging from the bodice and spreading tutu formed by the remnants of the cone. Soon the cone had disappeared, and there was only the mop-up operation of the rear guard of the melted ice cream.

“I’ve got my hands full here,” Simon said, lifting his head, gazing pointedly until Mal got the hint and Simon collapsed into a tired, sated heap.

“Just what I need,” Mal said. “Insulation.”

 **Abbey of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Creagan’s Peak**

The Shepherd sat on the veranda of his guest cottage. After Vespers, he had scrubbed in buckets of water with dried gourds, then sat in the bath filled to foaming by a hot spring. Once, the custom of custody of the eyes had been necessary to keep him from dwelling too much on one brother’s elegant lines of limbs, or another brother’s frank pride in the muscles put on by work in the abbey’s fields and gardens. Later, it was necessary to guard against envy of their youth. Now he was just glad to bolster his faith by the contentment that he saw them take in religious life.

He had shared the monks’ simple meal, had read his Evening Office, and now relaxed with a mug of green tea. All of the monasteries of his Order had those mugs: hexagonal, green-gray, with a handle, although the mugs could be grasped in two hands as well. He had taken off the lid, to let his tea cool. He knew that, in the winter, when the monks wore two padded kimonos, the tea provided a welcome portable heat source. The lid kept the tea a little warmer, a little longer.

He put down the mug and sat, counting syllables on his fingers.

 _The hot day has cooled.  
Silver moon meditates on  
The grateful old man._


End file.
